museum shops of the world:museum für kommunikation frankfurt

Steph actually bought things from this Museum shop, hooray! (Sadly, she wasn’t able to buy these sheeps made from rotary telephones)

Steph (and BFF of No Award Danni) are giant telecommunications nerds, and so it was with delight that they spent some time in the Museum for Telecommunication in Frankfurt.

The permanent collection, located on the basement level, is a history of communication spanning as far back as they could bring themselves to represent (there’s semaphore, and really ancient Chinese script that I always struggle to understand, amongst others). It includes a section on Deutsche Post (with many cars, vans, and even a DP horse drawn carriage), and a variety of excellent post boxes, and a collection of Enigma machines, which I’ve never seen in person before and so it was all VERY EXCITING. There’s also a giant collection of phones, TVs and radios.

The visiting collection whilst we were there was a history of advertising, which of course I also found very interesting because it’s all about changing messages and audiences and things.

The permanent collection is all in German with books that contain an English translation available for loan. In this instance, I took German-speaking BFF Danni to tell me what was happening. The visiting collection was in both German and English.

The shop is lovely and airy and open, and full of a nice combination of things from the museum (for example, postcards of the telephone sheeps, tiny DP car toys) and other things, like books about cryptography and telephone games for small humans. The prices also widely vary.